Grease Trap Baptism

(Southern Boy Edition)

If you’ve never marinated in hot bleach behind a 24-hour truck stop after falling into a grease trap, then you’ve never really lived.

Let me take you back to the early ’60s. I was five. My best friend was four and change. His name? Willie Dog.

Before you ask—No, he wasn’t a dog. And no, I don’t know where “Dog” came from. Every small town south of the Mason-Dixon had at least 18 Willies, so most of ’em needed nicknames. He got Willie Dog. Coulda been worse. Coulda been “Booger” or “Skeeter.” So really, I guess he lucked up.

Anyway, my mom and dad owned a place called the Drive-Round-It. And yes—you could literally drive ’round it. It wasn’t just a restaurant. It was a barbecue joint, gas station, truck stop, community gossip pit, and—depending on the hour—bar and potential crime scene. Think Fried Green Tomatoes meets Waffle House fight night, but with better ribs and fewer commandments.

We didn’t live in the Drive-Round-It, but close enough to smell like we did. Our single-wide sat just up the hill—with one rattling window A/C, fake wood paneling, and a front porch that was one storm away from splinters. That A/C unit? Sounded like a lawnmower running over chicken bones. It didn’t so much cool the trailer as keep it just this side of melting.

Now, here’s where it gets good—

Right behind the restaurant was the grease trap. That thing smelled like Satan’s armpit after a three-day fish fry. It looked like a dark, greasy slab of concrete and stayed damp even in August. To Willie Dog and me, it was a tightrope daring us to cross. An irresistible temptation. So naturally, there was no way two little kids with more nerve than sense were walking away.

Big. Damn. Mistake.

One step in and that thing gave way like a Dollar Store lawn chair at a Pentecostal potluck. SPLASH. Down we went into a witch’s brew of fryer oil, mop water, and food scraps so rank even the rats wouldn’t touch ’em.

Next thing I know, I guess Daddy heard the splash ’cause he comes busting out the side door like a bull through a gate, grabs us both up—one in each arm—and carries us through the restaurant, dripping, greasy, stinky and proud.

Now this is the part where you’d expect a whoopin’. A full-volume chewing out. A “your mama’s gonna have a fit” kind of moment.

Nope.

Daddy laughed. The cooks laughed. A couple truckers laughed. A customer in the corner spit sweet tea clear across the table.

Daddy stripped us and tossed us into a big tin washtub in the kitchen—filled with hose water and bleach. Not the friendly, lavender-scented kind we have now. I’m talkin’ old-school, crime-scene Clorox. The kind that could remove grease, red clay, and your entire epidermis in under ten minutes.

We sat there soaking like we’d just been plopped in a kiddie pool. Willie Dog giggled. I started giggling. And before long, every single person in that kitchen was doubled over watching two swamp rats get de-greased.

We came out smelling like bleach and mischief. But also, as the day’s best comedy duo.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first spa treatment.

I’ve done a lot of dumb things since then—but that was the day I truly earned my Southern boy badge.

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